Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
109 comments
·January 23, 2025firefoxd
My employer picked vwo over my own custom in house ab testing tool [0]. I was so pissed!
Congrats, yours was the better tool.
dang
Here's that earlier thread - thanks for pointing it out!
Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 - June 2020 (128 comments)
rwalling
Bravo, @paraschopra What an incredible journey. I remember when you launched. I hadn't realized it was 16 years ago!
I'll hit you up privately with an invite to tell your story on Startups for the Rest of Us. It's a fitting place for a bootstrapper like yourself.
mattfrommars
Congrats!
What made you commit and build this project when you were 22 year old vs million others SAAS you could have built at that time? Say, a CRM to compete with Salesforce, or a new web based Excel or web based Photoshop tool?
nexarithm
Are you planning to write blog post of the journey? It is always joyful to read about process and details about such acquisitions. I remember couple shared in HN and got lots of interest such as waze.
Congratulations!
tikkun
Awesome. For others, I see that Paras is now running https://turingsdream.co/ "an AI hackhouse running a six-week residency for coders and researchers who're interested in AI. The hackhouse is in Bangalore, India and you can join it either in-person, or in a hybrid fashion."
elevatedastalt
Congratulations!
Just curious, usually being purchased by a Private Equity firm spells a death knell for the company. Of course at the right price it makes sense that you wanted to sell it away, but what are your thoughts about what will happen to the company now?
bigiain
Just as a counter point, private equity seems to have helped WPEngine become so successful that Mullenweg has totally lost his mind over it.
dang
I put this post in the second-chance pool* as soon as I found out about it, but given that the startup is India, I think Paras might also be, in which case he may be offline for a while! (Edit: and will have rather a lot of responses waiting for him when that changes...)
* https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
constantlm
Congrats! I used VWO extensively in a previous life as a "growth hacker".
phtrivier
Good for you ! Are you completely exiting the company, or will you still run the product, if only in part ? Are you leaving a team behind ?
I'm very curious about how to approach such a moment. There are so many horror stories where an acquisition ends up being "bad news" for teams and users alike - I hope this won't be the case here !
dowager_dan99
linked TC story says "owned 70%... retaining a small ownership"
ulf-77723
Congrats!
What have been your highest highs and lowest lows during this journey?
When Google discontinued their A/B Testing tool - was it surprising for you?
How has the CRO landscape changed out of your perspective in the last 15 years? 1st party tracking, serverside testing, etc.
gigatexal
This post made my day. What a dope shoutout to everyone. Congrats to you! and your team and everyone who got paid.
Congrats again!
duxup
Congratulations.
I'm curious... what do people do after something like this?
Vacation?
jborden13
I bought a steel bike, grabbed my hammock, and went on a 4 day 250 mile solo adventure through the Texas hill country.
Riding through empty valleys at sunset with a herd of deer pacing alongisde me was enough to break me into tears. It's what I needed to move on.
duxup
It is interesting how many stories in a way involve running or moving away from the lifestyle that ... bought them a new lifestyle.
jborden13
When something consumes you so rabidly and ferociously for so long, and then is just gone (poof), it leaves you searching. Searching for recovery and meaning.
It's 4 years later, and I'm still searching...
hipadev23
Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
amrrs
He is already running a hacker house in bangalore with cohorts of researchers and practiontioners getting together - https://turingsdream.co/
so probably it's picking one of those ideas or investing in it!
klik99
I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had. A year on he hadn’t moved out of his small apartment, still contracted, still used the same cheap phone, and hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc. it struck me as the smartest move, take your time to come up with a plan and don’t just dive into recklessly spending it.
I also know a founder couple I was close friends with who had a sizeable exit, who moved to Costa Rica where they could spend little and focus on writing, a side interest that ended up leading to their next company.
I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.
criddell
> I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.
It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do.
When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money. Lots of it would be spent on hiring experts to teach me things.
sky2224
It's almost analogous to having a video game totally completed for you in a way. Everything is "done" for you essentially since you just buy your way out of problems at that point.
Before coming into that amount of money, you can be distracted by the survival aspects of living in society where you're just trying to make money and live comfortably. There isn't any necessity to have to figure out what you truly want out of life or what your passions are.
Once you do have money, now you have to face that. You have to truly find who you are. Otherwise, you're depressed or you go and blow all the money on things to distract you from finding who you are.
servercobra
I buy lotto tickets because my friends do a pool. I'm not sure I'd be happy with the money, but I am very sure I'd be very unhappy if I was a schmuck who didn't put in a very small amount (to me) of money to be in the pool. I consider it insurance more than anything!
dr_kiszonka
> When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money.
I buy lotto tickets for the same reason! Their expected value is very low but the maximum value is thought-provoking. For me, $50k would be life-changing. One billion is hard to imagine.
mrsilencedogood
Imo, it's mostly because our brains are still hunter-gatherer brains. While things like language acquisition and culture-instilling do fundamentally change us, our base hardware is still pre-currency pre-agriculture (pre-pretty-much-everything) hunter-gatherer. In Sapiens, it's noted that if a homo sapiens from 100k years ago ended up on an autopsy table in the modern day, you would never know anything was amiss anatomically. You might notice the teeth are unusually straight and free of decay (pre-grain diet, with huge amounts of chewing strengthening the jaw and allowing teeth to properly align), well-trained body with low body fat, and similarly free of many of the scourges of our modern diet and lifestyles). But that's it.
So, people suddenly get taken out of "the grind" which was their only approximation of the drive-reward cycle that their brain depends on. So what now? Unfortunately, they've been freed to confront man's ultimate foe: philosophy. And lots of people aren't cut out or ready for that. (One could even say most philosophers aren't, given how much many of them suffered).
conductr
As somewhat of a counterpoint, my experience was we often romanticize these things that we’d like to do if only we had the time/money/etc. But sometimes you’ll find once you do have the opportunity to explore those things, it’s not as interesting as we had hoped. It might keep you busy for a year or so, but then boredom and lack of fulfillment rear their head again. I think this is why serial entrepreneurship is a pretty common thing.
duxup
Agreed, I think I could find things to dedicate my time to that would be fulfilling. I'm not surprised, but maybe I do wonder what is in those folks lives who can't find something.
Having said that ... I'm also not in that situation, you never know.
thwarted
> I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had
Is there a word missing in this? How did they join after acquisition and have a meaningful financial windfall? And being an early employee?
hapidjus
They met a year after.
samiv
Just because the company was sold for a bunch of money doesn't mean the people (yes even the founders) got a huge payout. Liquidation preference and other schemes can make sure that when the investors get their money there's nothing to left to share between other share holders including the founders.
(Not saying that this is the case here, just pointing that out)
EDIT: As some are already pointing out, yes the title says "bootstrapped". I missed that initially, so apologies.
robryan
To note as well the Techcrunch article specifically says 71% ownership.
Klonoar
This particular OP notes they were bootstrapped. That term might mean any number of things here, but I would imagine they had less exposure to losing out.
Or at least, I hope they did. What a fantastic win for them.
fourseventy
The title of this post literally says "bootstrapped"
nico
“I am rich and I have no idea what to do”
andrepd
Jesus Christ, I pray that I never become such a grotesque caricature of an alienated SF techbro. What a tool.
anonzzzies
I had this 25 years ago when I was 25; the amount was lower but it was enough to never do anything ever again. I went hiking, got 1 billion ideas during walking for new companies and products, so started making some of them. Still am.
gregschlom
I have a couple of friends in this exact situation. In their mid-thirties, no kids. They bought a very very nice house in the mountains after their startup got acquired, and spend most of their time travelling around the world. It's pretty awesome.
dylan604
I would hope some time off is possible, but I could totally see myself self-funding the next thing immediately after that time off. I'm guessing the bootstrapping types would get bored and look for the next thing
Hello HN,
I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141
Today, I sold the company to a private equity firm for $200mn.
It's covered on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/23/everstone-acquires-bootstr...
I was a 22 year old fresh graduate when I launched VWO on HN and got initial users. Feedback from people like @patio11 helped me get to PMF. And now, 15 years later, "site:ycombinator.com" is what I appended when I wanted to search for advice on what to keep in mind while selling my company.
Thank you HN for sharing inspiration and wisdom all along. I honestly don't think I would have been an entrepreneur had it not been for hacker news.
Every single day, HN is the first website I open! I'm feeling very grateful towards the community. Thanks @dang, and thank you Paul Graham for your essays and for creating this beautiful corner of the internet!